


An Immodest Proposal

by wombuttress



Series: Poor Communication Kills [4]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 04:26:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6269632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wombuttress/pseuds/wombuttress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lavellan isn't very good with words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Immodest Proposal

Hathorn Lavellan was a very satisfied man.

He was presently the most powerful man in Thedas. He commanded vast armies, vaster resources, and yet vaster loyalties. And the most powerful man in Thedas was a Dalish elf—the banners of the Creators in the halls of Skyhold, the aggressive displays of his Dalishness evident everywhere, from the décor to the throne of the Inquisition itself.

He had but recently returned from a horrible trip to the Winter Palace in Orlais, where in a few deft moves, he had arranged for the death of the shem empress, blackmailed a shem emperor, and installed an elf as the puppeteer ruler. He’d told her to mind Orlais as he sipped from his champagne flute, and then gone off to have a dance with his evil Tevinter magister.

Now Dorian—Dorian was the true reason Hathorn Lavellan was such a satisfied man. Were Hathorn a poetic man, he might have used all sorts of language to describe every aspect of Dorian that he adored, from his eyes to his skin to his buttocks to his charming use of Tevene in bed to the wrinkle in his forehead whenever he was thinking, which was often. Were he a musical man, he might have sung him odes of eternal love. Were he a learned man, he might have compared their love to the ancient loves in the great sagas.

But Hathorn Lavellan was none of those things. He was an uneducated, illiterate man who mostly felt comfortable sitting in trees while covered in dirt. He was an uneducated, illiterate, frequently dirt-covered man who was in charge of half of Thedas.

However, he was also an incredibly wealthy man, so he primarily expressed his endless appreciation of his lover by buying him nice things. This seemed to make Dorian happy, and as a result, Hathorn was happy, too.

There had been a time, near the beginning of the relationship, wherein Hathorn had some serious trouble expressing the preciseness of his feelings to Dorian. There had been terrible danger of miscommunication, that had finally been resolved totally and completely after their first night together. It had been perfectly smooth sailing ever since. Hathorn never once had to talk about his feelings, and joyously, this seemed not to be a problem. He could express his appreciation in other ways.

At any rate, Hathorn loved Dorian, and Dorian assuredly loved him back, and that was that.

\--

Dorian Pavus was, in some ways, an extremely happy man, and in other ways, a deeply dissatisfied one.

And Hathorn— _fucking—_ Lavellan was all of those ways.

Dorian had never in his life had such a…public relationship. Particularly not one where his lover was the Inquisitor, the greatest mover and shaker in Thedas, and had a habit of—well— _flaunting_ him. Primarily by bringing him everywhere, and buying him things, and insisting he go out on missions in what Dorian felt was a rather unnecessarily revealing set of Par Vollen ‘armor’.

Dorian liked _that,_ even if it had made him somewhat uncomfortable and confused at the start. He’d gotten used to it by now. Hathorn Lavellan was not a man to be dissuaded, and if Hathorn Lavellan’s mind was set on spoiling Dorian rotten, Dorian would just have to live with it.

He liked even better their private moments, of which there were quite a few, given Hathorn’s frequent habit of simply telling Leliana and Josephine to run the Inquisition for him for a few hours while he collected Dorian and disappeared to his quarters for the rest of the day.

All in all, being in what was apparently a relationship with Hathorn Lavellan was wonderful. It had been the best of Dorian’s life, and would probably be the best he would ever have. And despite all his best efforts to keep his expectations low, he had fallen very much in love. With Hathorn. Fucking. Lavellan.

The problem with Hathorn ( _fucking)_ Lavellan was that he almost certainly did not love Dorian back.

He’d as much as asked him directly, after their first night together, what his intentions were. And Hathorn had…stared at the ground, mumbled incoherently, then, after five minutes of silence, had simply leapt buck naked out the window to avoid answering.

How he had survived the fall was a mystery, but he’d shown up in the library the next day as dashing as ever, suggesting they spend some time together. And then there had been a second night, and a third, and now here they were, with Dorian’s things in his dresser, with huge solid gold statues of naked muscular Qunari men decorating the bedroom simply because Dorian had offhandedly mentioned an appreciation for muscles once.

Hathorn had never brought it up again, and Dorian had taken the hint. This relationship was about sex, not love. The fact that Dorian was pathetically in love with Hathorn Fucking Lavellan was simply an unfortunate detail.

There were times, after lovemaking, when Hathorn would look at him. Dorian could never parse his expression. Hathorn Fucking Lavellan made approximately three distinct facial expressions a week, and most of them were angry. But there was nearly something in his intense green eyes that made Dorian think it was _almost_ possible….

But then Hathorn would roll off, say “Good night,” and start snoring, and Dorian would have to live with his disappointment.

Well, so what if Hathorn Fucking Lavellan was the most incredible man he’d ever met? So what if he moved with hypnotizing, deliberate grace, every muscle honed to lean perfection? So what if he had the burden of a whole world on his shoulders, with no one but Dorian to ease it? So what if he unwaveringly supported the mage rebellion, despite his near-terror of magic, simply because he felt it was the right thing to do? So what if he spent much of his leisure time with—of all people—Sera and Cole, practically daring the world to question the company he kept? So what if his rare laugh was scratchy and low and delightful, and so what if his rare smile was warmer than a thousand suns? So what if he was the best thing that had ever happened to him?

It didn’t matter, because the bloody elf just didn’t love him back, and Dorian would have to take what he could get.

\---

Hathorn collapsed back on his huge pile of colorful silk pillows—which he had because Dorian liked them—and sighed happily. A moment later, Dorian pressed up to him again, his head on Hathorn’s shoulder. Putting his arms around him felt as natural as breathing.

He’d been thinking about this for a while. The Dalish didn’t marry, but they did have bonding ceremonies. But, Hathorn rather suspected marriage was something different for the shemlen. Dalish elves would bond usually quite young, and the ceremony would consist of obtaining the Keeper’s blessing and giving a prayer to the couple’s respective patron god. And bonding was always about love. Shemlen, it seemed, would marry for any damn reason, and they would make a big expensive fuss over it, too.

He didn’t understand it, but he did want to understand Dorian, so he had made the Effort.

Shemlen marriage seemed to have three components. First, there had to be a ring, and a proposal, which was—in its most romantic form—a surprise. Why shemlen couples didn’t simply mutually agree to stay together, and then do so for as long both of them wished it, Hathorn had no idea, but it appeared that this was simply the way things were done.

Second, there had to be a period of engagement, during which arrangements for the wedding would be made. This time could last months, sometimes even years. Hathorn rather hoped they would have a _short_ engagement. Engagements sounded stressful and boring, from Varric’s descriptions.

And third, there would be the wedding, which would be huge and expensive and involve public kissing. Hathorn thought he could at least look forward to that. He loved flaunting his wealth and kissing Dorian in public.

So he had obtained a ring. He’d first dragged Sera to every jewelry store in Val Royeux, before deciding that none of them were quite ostentatious enough. And if Val Royeux did not have something ostentatious enough, he figured that nothing sufficiently ostentatious existed. So he carved a simple Dalish promise ring instead. Sera had made fun of him. He had told her to go boil her head.

The ring was currently in a drawer on the nightstand beside the bed. He’d had some thought of proposing publically, but he couldn’t think of how to do it. Should he do it right in the Skyhold throne room, in front of all the milling nobles? But wait, if he was shooting for “audacious”, perhaps he should seek a bigger audience? Val Royeux? The next formal event? Oh, but no formal event could possibly top Halamshiral, and he’d already missed his chance there.

Or should he do it during a stolen private moment, perhaps on a walk through the garden? But their walks usually consisted of Dorian talking and Hathorn listening. He doubted he could get a word in edgewise for long enough to do the knee thing that was allegedly traditional.

That pretty much left their time in the bedroom. Dorian was currently too blissed out to talk. The ring was right there.

No time like the present, Hathorn supposed. He sat up and grabbed it from the drawer, concealing it in his fist.

“So, uh, Dorian,” he said, eloquent as ever. The mage gave him a pleased, sleepy look. Hathorn bravely ploughed on. “Correct me if I’m wrong about shemlen traditions—but I think this is appropriate at this stage—and, well, er, would you like to get married? That is to say—will you marry me, specifically?”

He presented the ring.

Dorian stared at him. He looked at the ring. He looked at Hathorn. He sputtered.

“It’s not very good,” Hathorn admitted. “I carved it myself. Sorry.”

Dorian just about choked on his own spit. Hathorn nervously waited for him to finish. Eventually Dorian gathered himself together enough to say something.

What he said was, first, a long string of Tevene oaths, only some of which Hathorn caught. What he said next was, _“What?!?!”_

Oh, dear, Hathorn thought. I’ve messed this up.

Dorian did not wait for his response. “Hathorn Lavellan, you cannot just _say_ that to me! That is, expressly, absolutely, not permitted!!! You cannot _propose_ to me _in bed_ with your bloody _hand-carved ring_ and expect me to just accept that as though it is normal!! Honestly, you—you bloody—what am I supposed to make of this!? Do you think this is a game?! Carrying on with me these past two years, as you have, and then simply _proposing?!_ No, ser!! I will _not_ stand for it!!!”

Dorian continued in this vein, barely having to pause for breath, growing increasingly red and agitated, as Hathorn listened politely. The rant continued for several minutes.

Hathorn was getting extremely worried. Dorian was clearly upset, and he had no idea why. And he still hadn’t given an explicit yes-or-no answer. He just kept yelling.

Hathorn decided it expedient to interrupt him as he paused to take a breath. “Please go on, but—is that a yes, or a no?”

Dorian stared at him in astonishment, his left eye twitching, a vein pulsing in his forehead. Even his mustache seemed frazzled. “A _yes or a no?!??!?!_ Hathorn _Fucking_ Lavellan, that is not even _near_ the beginning of the list of problems contained in this situation!!”

And he continued, yet more flustered than before.

Hathorn listened. Hathorn was pretty good at listening. If he could listen to Josephine talk about social protocols and listen to Solas talk about the Fade, he could certainly listen to the love of his life yell at him for some inexplicable reason.

But as he patiently experienced being yelled at, the reason became steadily less and less inexplicable. It dawned on Hathorn, as the rant progressed in length and intensity, that the reason Dorian was upset, was that he—did not actually know how Hathorn had felt about him all this time, and was therefore, quite surprised by this development.

Oh, dear, Hathorn thought. I have really, really, _really_ messed this up.

He started to panic.

He broke out of his terror-induced paralysis and placed both his hands on either of Dorian’s shoulders , looked him intently in the eye, and tried, very, very hard, to say, “I love you, and in fact, have always loved you, and I am terribly, terribly sorry about this dreadful misunderstanding.”

But he couldn’t do it.

He couldn’t. Fucking. Do it.

The panic began in earnest, then.

“Dorian,” he said, interrupting again. “Listen. Uh. Stay here. I’ll be right back. But don’t go anywhere. Actually, I’m going to take your clothes to ensure that you do not go anywhere. Alright? Alright!”

And he darted from the bed, snatching Dorian’s ridiculous assortment of belt buckles and robe-parts from the ground as he dashed right out the door and nearly fell down the stairs.

He made a beeline for Varric’s quarters, and banged on the door repeatedly.

No answer. Damn Varric and his heavy, peaceful sleep! Damn him!

Hathorn picked the lock, which took several excruciating seconds. Inside, Varric was snoring peacefully.

“Varric Tethras!” the Inquisitor hollered, shaking the innocent dwarf violently. “Varric, wake the fuck up!”

“Aaahh! Sticks?” Varric rubbed at his eyes, shaking his head in disbelief. “What the fuck? Is someone dead? Did Hawke blow something up?”

“What?! No! None of that inconsequential bullshit!” Hathorn seized him by the shoulders and shook. “Varric, for the sake of sweet June whose marks are permanently tattooed on my ass in my own blood, _get out of bed_!”

“Woah, there, Sticks,” Varric said, attempting to gently loosen Hathorn’s death grip on his shoulders. He was unsuccessful, and instead contented himself with patting him reassuringly. He glanced down at him. “You’re naked.”

“Yes,” Hathorn confirmed.

Varric shook his head. “Okay. Okay, just tell me, slowly and calmly, what is going on.”

“I fucked up, Varric,” Hathorn said. “I fucked up _real bad._ I fucked up worse than possibly any other elf has ever fucked up or will ever fuck up, or could even conceivably, in theory, possibly ever fuck up.”

“Ouch. Okay, so what exactly did you do?”

“I proposed.”

“Aw, geez. So it didn’t go well?”

Hathorn didn’t have anything to say to that except a kind of strangled yelp. Varric increased the frequency of his comforting pats.

“He didn’t _know,_ Varric,” Hathorn said miserably. “He thought it was just about the sex. I fucked up. Creators, I fucked up.”

“There, there, Sticks,” Varric said. “Do you…want a hug? Or a drink?”

“No!!! I want you to get out of bed and _fix this!!!”_

Varric blinked. “Uh, how do you want me to do that, exactly?”

“You’re a _writer,_ aren’t you!? So you get up and you _write_ me something that _expresses_ how I _feel_ because I can’t _fucking_ do it myself!!!!” Hathorn yelp-shrieked, his voice undulating wildly through the octaves.

Varric sighed heavily. “Only for you, Sticks.”

Hathorn hovered nervously as Varric begrudgingly lifted himself off the bed, scratching his ass and looking around for his robe. Hathorn found it first and flung it at his face. He then hurriedly lit every lamp in the room, nearly setting the curtains on fire, dragged the chair in front of the desk out and pointed at it insistently. He rooted through the drawers until he found a bottle of ink and some parchment, which he slammed onto the desk.

Varric watched this flurry of rapid activity, yawning.

“For June’s sake, _hurry!”_

“Alright, alright…”

Varric sat heavily at the desk, yawning again. “I don’t suppose you could get me some coffee?” He took a look at Hathorn’s expression. “I suppose not.”

He dipped the quill in the ink bottle, lowered it to the parchment, and then hesitated.

“What’s the problem?” Hathorn demanded.

“What do you want me to actually write?” Varric said. “You, uh, never specified.”

“How I feel,” Hathorn said bluntly.

“Uh, hello Sticks, I don’t know how you feel?”

Hathorn sputtered. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Varric raised an eyebrow.

Hathorn stumbled on. “Dorian’s _wonderful._ He’s—he’s so earnest, and passionate, and an _idealist,_ and he was there with me in that false future, and he—argh, you’ve met him, you know what he’s like! Look, it doesn’t matter what words you use—just—he has to _know,_ alright? He has to know.”

Varric shook his head, chuckling. “Alright, Sticks, I think I know what to write.”

For the next half-hour, the room was filled with the sound of scratching quill on parchment. Hathorn hovered. First over Varric’s left shoulder, then his right. Then he simply crouched on the desk like a gargoyle, watching intently. He couldn’t read the words, but watching them appear felt almost ritualistically necessary. Finally the yellowish sheet was all filled in with scratchy black markings. Varric scattered sand across it until it was dry, and then shook the sand loose.

“Alright, Sticks, here you go,” Varric said, handing it over. “You, uh, want me to tell you what it says?”

“Nope,” said Hathorn, snatching it out of his hand. He was already halfway to the door.

He took the stairs up to his quarters four at a time, and as a result, when he slammed open his bedroom door, he was breathing rather heavily. No amount of athleticism could have made _that_ climb easy. Dorian was still there, wearing one of his robes. It was green silk, and entirely too small for him, achieving a not-unpleasant effect. But Hathorn didn’t have time to admire it.

“Here,” he panted, thrusting the sheet at him. “Didn’t—write it—but—mean it.”

Dorian gave him a sour look and snatched the parchment from him. “Are you going to explain yourself, you damned elf?”

Hathorn still had his hands on his knees, out of breath. “Just—read it!”

Dorian continued to glare for a few moments, and then turned his attention to the parchment before him. Hathorn watched as his beautiful dark eyes darted across the page once—then twice—then thrice. Finally he looked up at Hathorn. Then he read it a fourth time, and a fifth.

Then he gingerly folded the parchment in half, then into quarters, and placed it inside his borrowed robe, close to his heart. He took a deep breath.

He took several deliberate steps towards Hathorn—he didn’t know if he was about to be kissed or electrocuted—but Dorian simply stuck a long slim finger at his chest. His lip was twitching slightly. “ _Yooouuuuu,”_ Dorian hissed, but never finished the sentence. He simply covered his eyes with his hand and threw his head back.

Hathorn grinned nervously. “So, er, will that be a yes, then?”

Dorian shot him the most withering look yet, dragging his hand down his face. “I’m going for a walk.”

Without another word, he left.

Hathorn wasn’t poetic enough to think of his heart as having been broken. He had no literary context for the great heartbreaks of the ages. He had not the maturity or intuition to do examine his present emotional state at all, let alone actually sit and have a good cry.

What he did instead was lie on his bed, stare at the ceiling, and feel absolutely terrible.

It was perhaps an hour later that the dark night was lit up with a burst of bright violet light. Hathorn shot up, still quite awake, and rushed to the balcony, peering around. A moment later, the light appeared again, and somewhere in the distance, a snow-covered tree was felled. The innocent trees scattered around the lower parts of the mountain were subjected to an electrical storm for the next forty-five minutes.

Hathorn watched. Unmistakably Dorian’s magic. He always did this when he was having emotions. Personally, when Hathorn had emotions, he went into the woods and sat in trees and shot small animals, and then skinned, cooked and ate them. It relaxed him. But he supposed everyone had their methods.

After a while, Dorian’s assault upon the trees ceased. What few conifers had stood on the mountain were mostly gone now—or at least very charred. Hathorn went back inside and started to pace.

A half hour later, the doors to his quarters slammed open, causing him to embarrassingly leap a foot in the air.

“Dorian!” he said tightly.

Dorian took several heavy, deep breaths, quivering. Then he raised his head. “So,” he said, quite cheerfully, “I was thinking perhaps a summer wedding? Summers weddings are always nice. Something with periwinkle color scheme, I think. Periwinkle is definitely my color.”

Hathorn stood there, struck dumb. “So—you aren’t mad?” he managed eventually.

Dorian sighed. “I’d have to be mad, to keep carrying on with such an infuriating, emotionally constipated, handsome bastard. But you know what they say about those evil, mad Tevinter magisters.”

“That…they’re….very handsome, and have good taste in men?”

“See? You’re getting better at this verbal affection thing.” Dorian stepped closer, slinging his arms around Hathorn’s neck. “I suppose Varric wrote all that wordy claptrap?”

Hathorn nodded.

“I thought so. It didn’t sound anything like you at all.”

Hathorn shrugged.

“Well, let’s try this, then. I love you. Dearly. Can I assume that, after all, the feeling is mutual?”

Hathorn nodded vigorously. Dorian chuckled. “Now that—that’s more like the man I love.”

Hathorn smiled, and though the phrase would never in his life have occurred to him, Dorian’s comparison to the warmth of a thousand suns was not at all inapt.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://gayspacejew.tumblr.com/)   
>  [my oc blog](http://pile-of-dragon-filth.tumblr.com/)


End file.
